Along the Food Chain with Michael Olson…1124: The Big Bucks In Bottled Water

Miranda Fox, Campaign Manager, The Story of StuffShould water be a private or public resource?

The municipal tap water of Flint, Michigan is said to be very bad, and few trust it enough to drink it.

The fear of municipal water is not restricted to that of disasters like Flint, it extends even to municipalities with good tap water, as residents come to fear what may be in, or what may have been added to, that water.

That fear is good if you are in the business of selling bottled water. To see how good, take a quick peak at the flow of drinking water money in Michigan.

The Nestle Company, a Swiss multinational, pays the State of Michigan a $200 administrative fee to extract hundreds of millions of gallons of pure Michigan ground water, which it then sells back to the residents of Michigan in plastic bottles for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though the business plan is working out very well for Nestle, some residents of Michigan, and other states throughout the United States, are beginning to ask…